“AAAAARRRRGH!”
Syrah’s words were cut short by an anguished shriek of pain and horror. She stared, wide eyed, at the grouped Sigûrth men, as did every other soul within the clearing’s boundaries. Taking advantage of Syrah’s own call to observe the slave collar around the former Priest’s throat, Kareth Grahst had decided to seize the opportunity to break the spell she was spinning with her words. The moment she had pointed out Rost, Grahst had pushed himself to his feet, pulled the man up by the back of his robes, and drawn a long broadsword from where it had been hidden beneath his furs on his hip.
Then, without a moment’s pause, he’d run it through the man’s lower back.
Rost screamed, twisting and thrashing in pain, slicing his own hand to the bone as he grabbed at the bloody blade protruding more than a foot out of his stomach. Grahst, after he was sure every eye was on the slave, withdrew the sword, then plunged it back in, this time forcing the steel through the lower part of Rost’s gut.
Again and again Grahst impaled the man, metal penetrating flesh with a wet, sucking sthuck each time, careful not to pierce lung or diaphragm so as to ensure Rost would keep screaming. Again and again he ran him through, shoving the sword between skin and bone and muscle with such savage fury that soon the front of Rost’s abdomen was a tattered mess, too damaged to hold his entrails and organs in, and they began to spill out even through what was left of his shirt and fur cloak. Grahst had stabbed the man at least a half dozen times before he finally stopped screaming, and it was another three before he stopped moving altogether. When this happened, Grahst threw the body to the ground and fell to one knee beside it, grabbing the twitching man’s hair with his free hand and lifting the sword high with the other.
With two savage chops, blood flicking across the settling snow in scattered lines, Grahst severed Egard Rost’s head as he lay dying in the snow.
Throughout this entire ordeal, Syrah had stood paralyzed, unable to so much as twitch a finger as she watched the murder. Around her the other Laorin—all as equally numbed by horrified fascination—had done the same. Like her, none of them had ever witnessed such barbaric cruelty. Syrah had seen death in her day. Terrible deaths. But those had been passings of illness and injury. Even working on both sides of the battle line between the valley towns and the Sigûrth, Syrah had never seen such gruesome and callous disregard for life as what Kareth Grahst had just forced them all to bear witness to.
And she had once seen Raz i’Syul Arro kill four men in as many breaths…
Someone—Syrah wasn’t sure who—was vomiting behind her.
“The Sigûrth say you silent… you silent.”
A cold, unlike anything Syrah had ever known, washed down her back at the words. Kareth Grahst spoke the Common Tongue with a deep, booming tenor which carried over the wind, his words broken and heavily accented. He was getting back on his feet, attempting to wipe away some of the blood splattered across his face with the back of his sword hand as he did, Rost’s head in the other.
And he was still smiling.
“You silent,” Grahst repeated, starting in her direction, “and you listen. Words, not enough. Bravery, not enough. The White Wyth takes the Sigûrth’s traditions, takes the Sigûrth’s life ways. The White Wyth comes, tells Sigûrth to bow to the vrek”—he spat the slur the mountain men had for the people of the valley towns even through curved lips—“tells them bow must, or death. Tell them to peace make, or death. Wyth speaks of dying children, dying families, dying tribes. But words, not enough.”
No more than two strides away, the Sigûrth tossed Egard Rost’s head at Syrah’s feet.
“Blood, enough.”
Syrah forced herself not to look down, forced herself not to imagine the scream that must be frozen into Rost’s pale, narrow features. Instead she held Grahst’s gaze, praying so hard to the Lifegiver for the strength to keep doing so that she was amazed no one could hear her pleas.
“I came to your lands as a servant of your people,” she said firmly, lifting her head proudly despite the shake in her legs. “It was my wish to see them through the freeze, nothing more. If the ‘bowing’ you’re referring to is a reference to the late Kayle accepting the help from—”
“SPEAK OF EMREHT, YOU WILL NOT!”
Syrah stopped abruptly, surprised as, for the first time, Grahst lost his smile. The confident, leisurely grin was suddenly replaced by a snarl of fury, twisting his blood-smeared, bearded face into a wrathful, wide-eyed glare.
It took Syrah a moment to make the connection.
“Grahst…” she said slowly, the realization dawning on her. “Grahst… You’re his son!”
The smile returned to the mountain man’s face, but it was as hard and cold as the stone of the stairs behind Syrah and her entourage.
“Son, his,” he confirmed with a nod. “My haro, Emreht Grahst was, for shame of it.”
“Shame?” Syrah demanded, feeling the anger seethe again within her. “Shame? You stand here, in the shadow of the man who butchered your father for his crown, spreading his evil and misery and chaos, and you have the balls to accuse Emreht of acting shamefully? It was your father’s decisions that allowed you to survive the last freeze, Grahst. It was his level-headedness—largely lacking in his offspring, it seems—that stopped the bloodshed for the first time in hundreds of years. Emreht didn’t like it, but he did what was needed of him to ensure the safety and strength of his people. He was a true leader. He was a—”
“Welkin,” Grahst finished for her, obviously hard-pressed to keep the smile up. “Coward. Shame to Sigûrth. Shame to Gods of Stone. Shame to himself. Shame to family. We of Stone, not cowards. Not welkin. The storms, we survive. The winter—the Kerr’ëT—we survive. Of the vrek, we need nothing. Emreht is shame.”
“Fool,” Syrah managed to say through clenched teeth. “Beast. Animal. The world has no use for men who seek nothing but violence when there could be harmony, war when there could be peace. You create your own hardships. You kill your own children.”
“Children, then, not blessed,” Grahst said with a shrug.
Syrah glowered at him for a moment, tempering her desire to fling faith at him, to pound Laor’s will into his thick, dirty skull.
But shitting on their beliefs was not going to win her back any momentum in this fight.
“You pray to hard gods, Kareth Grahst,” she said finally, switching back to the tribal dialect. “I can see why the men of Stone have been made so strong.”
“Cease your desperate flattery, Witch,” one of the other Sigûrth shouted in turn. “It won’t save you now.”
Grahst put a hand up without turning around, as though to silence the interrupter.
“Indeed,” he boomed, speaking in his native tongue as well. “It is time to forgo your foolish hope of seeding our ranks with mutiny, woman. My men may not be traditionally ‘loyal,’ just as you suspect, but there are other ways to guarantee the obedience of even clans as vicious as the Amreht and Kregoan.”
“Bastard,” Syrah snapped. “What did you do?”
“Shall we just say,” Grahst said with a wicked tilt of his head, hand still up in the air, “that none of them want to discover that their children weren’t blessed by the Gods…”
Syrah felt her hands shake, though she knew her anger was only partially directed at the Sigûrth. She felt stupid, almost pathetic. Of course a man like Gûlraht Baoill would have crafted himself an insurance policy. His army was made of men who likely hated him. Of course he would guarantee himself a way to control them.
“Syrah?”
Syrah turned to see one of the Priestesses, Sehne, looking at her with terrified eyes, and she realized she’d been silent for several long seconds.
“Syrah… W-what is it?” the Priestess asked her shakily. “What is he saying?”
Syrah opened her mouth to answer, but no words offered themselves in adequate response.
“Nothing,” she finally said, her eyes moving over the rest
of her group. “At least nothing worth listening to. We’re leaving. It’s time we got word back to Jofrey. Get the others ready to—”
“No.”
Grahst’s sharp interruption cut across Syrah’s orders, and she half turned to look at him, frowning. The man was still smiling, but there was something infinitely crueler about the sudden glee in his face.
And he was still holding that damn hand up, like a child with a question…
“We’re leaving,” she said again, in his tongue this time, in case he’d misunderstood. “You’ve made your point, and I’ve failed in making mine. The flag of truce guarantees us safe passage. We’ll return to the Citadel, and you can freeze your bloody damn arse off down here until your master arrives.”
Grahst’s face only stretched with further pleasure. “You came into our homes, Witch, preaching of your god and his ways. You spat on our traditions, stomped on our beliefs. Our customs were nothing more than an annoyance to you, to be followed out of courtesy rather than any true respect. You treaded your muddy boots all over our culture, and yet you expect us to recognize your laws? Your formalities? HA!” The man’s laugh was bitter and hard. “No, Witch. No. Unfortunately for you, my ‘master,’ as you call him, would take great pleasure in making some points to you himself. I have my orders, and we already told you—”
Syrah realized what was about to happen before the man had said the words, and she felt that cruel cold wash over her again as her eyes shot up to Grahst’s raised hand in sudden realization.
“—we don’t recognize your flag.”
The hand dropped, chopping earthward in a signaling stroke.
“LOOK OUT!” Syrah yelled in the Common Tongue, whirling around. “BEHIND—!”
She didn’t get to finish the sentence. There was a thump, and a dark form landed in front of her, cutting her off from the others and bulling her back with a narrow shoulder pauldroned by the skull of some feline animal. Syrah stumbled and tripped over the uneven ground beneath the snow, tumbling down and landing hard on her back. Scrambling onto her feet quickly, she rushed forward, back into the fray.
The Goatmen of Gähs, the scrawny wild men she’d thought had fled from Grahst’s company at her spurring words, were dropping down from where they’d slunk up into the cliffs above them. With great leaps and howls of the hunt, an easy score of them rained upon the ten Laorin huddled together at the base of the pass, killing two before anyone had time to react, cut down by bone knives and stone-headed hatchets. One other—Loben, she thought—fell as Syrah shouted for “STAFFS!”, his scream cutting through the sudden din of the battle. Derro, at the center of the group, extended his arms before him and pulled his hands inward, as though coaxing some imperceptible form into a loose embrace. Then he thrust his open palms skyward.
From beneath the snow at their feet, ten steel staffs leapt upright to stand, momentarily suspended, throughout the chaos.
Syrah plucked hers out of the air, and years of training and skills coursed back into her limbs. Taking a running leap and pulsing a touch of magic into her back foot, she shot over the seven remaining Priests and Priestesses to land right in the middle of the Goatmen, taking them utterly by surprise. With a scream of rage she lifted her staff high, then drove it downward into the frozen earth, pouring as much power into the blow as she could manage.
A concussive blast rocked the air, blowing the snow in a ten-foot radius around Syrah away in a perfect circle. The Goatmen outside of that range stumbled and tripped, knocked about by the invisible discharge of force.
The half-dozen inside were thrown a fifteen feet up and away by the shockwave.
Not waiting for her enemy to recover, Syrah pounced on the fallen men like a wolf among wounded animals. By the time the Gähs had recovered their footing she’d broken a jaw, an arm, and knocked one less fortunate out completely. Her staff twisted about in her hands like an extension of herself, working more like a lash of supple leather than the hardened steel of Cyurgi’ Di’s forges. It dealt out blows in rapid succession, forming a cage of silver around her that none of the thin, dirty men could penetrate. Every now and then she would summon up a little speck of light and throw it with precise deliberation out into the melee, looking to stun anyone that wore furs and bones. These spells the Gähs generally dodged with ease, but the magics kept the men on their toes and were getting more and more difficult to avoid as the other Laorin began to find the rhythm of battle around her. It wasn’t long before the remaining Priests and Priestesses were joining Syrah to form a defensive ring, each protecting the others’ backs.
They were only six, now…
But six was enough. About fifteen Goatmen still encircled them, their beady eyes peering through dirty hair. The mountain men howled like a pack as they circled in staggered directions, some around to the right, others to the left, and all alternatingly dashing in for feigned jabs at hands and legs and faces. It made for a confusing tactic, forcing the Laorin to watch every one of their opponents rather than just one at a time. Any wrong move would leave them exposed from some angle or another, and their precarious stalemate would shatter. Syrah felt herself start to sweat as she recognized the tactic. It was how the Goatmen hunted.
And she and the others had just become the prey.
“Watch for the rush,” she said over her shoulder, just loudly enough to ensure that everyone could hear. “They’re going to come all at once. Be ready.”
No one said anything, but she heard the sound of shifting snow and muttered prayers as bodies tensed and magic was drawn from the ether. Syrah readied her own spells, feeling power course through her arms and legs, bolstering them for the fight. She could see the tension altering the Gähs, see them shift slightly in preparation as if some silent signal was given.
They looked just about ready to pounce when howled words shattered the taut silence that had momentarily gripped the battlefield.
“DA BRÁN ED BRÛN!”
Syrah’s attention snapped around, but too late. The Sigûrth, Kareth Grahst at their head, split through the ring of Gähs, the Goatmen leaping back and away at the warcry. The Laorin—having been too preoccupied with the immediate danger—were suddenly hit by the spearhead formation of a dozen true tribal warriors, steel flashing and teeth bared in violent excitement. They struck head on, trusting in the overwhelming force of their charge—and the sheer mass of their leather and fur-clad bodies—to carry through whatever the Priests and Priestesses could throw at them.
They weren’t wrong.
Syrah felt her grip on the magics wink out as she lost her concentration, the casted strength she’d been building up in her body vanishing in an instant. At the same time, she saw Kareth bring his sword down on Sehne, the heavy blade smashing through her hastily raised block and catching her squarely in the head.
The woman’s skull split with a crack, like a log under a woodsman’s ax.
Rage and fear burned through Syrah, helping her find and draw from her gifts again in panicked heaves of power. She shot a trifecta of stunning spells at the Sigûrth even as she ducked under the horizontal swing of a heavy warhammer, and didn’t see if they made their marks or not. Dodging a second swing, she tucked her staff under one arm and thrust the open palm of her other hand in the direction of her attacker, a massive man in black furs with a myriad of silver bangles in his blonde hair. It was a move Talo had drilled into her, and the practice yielded instant results. The blast that erupted from between Syrah’s fingers caught the mountain man a direct blow, bowling him backwards and sending him tumbling and bouncing a half-dozen yards. Another man stepped in to replace the first, the paired hatchets he hefted in each hand already slick with the blood of some unfortunate or another. Syrah didn’t have time to summon another spell before he was on her, and she had to dance out of the way, ducking, somersaulting, and spinning from under the Sigûrth’s heavy blows. When she’d gained just enough distance to recover herself she shifted the momentum and met the man head on, surprising him
with the abrupt change in pattern. Working this to her advantage, Syrah made quick work of the Sigûrth, breaking a wrist with a swift downward cross-strike before snapping her body back, reversing the staff up, right into the mountain warrior’s temple.
Steel hit hair and bone with a thunk, and the man went stiff, toppling over sideways, out cold. Breathing heavily, Syrah turned towards the rest of the fight, looking to assist whatever comrades might still be left standing.
She didn’t so much as get to take a step before she found Kareth Grahst himself blocking her way, his leering grin bearing down even as his blade snaked in—deftly handled despite his bulk—and dealt her a shallow slash across the ribs.
A blooming pain seared through the left side of Syrah’s chest. She stumbled backwards, desperately avoiding another quick jab from Grahst’s sword. The next one she parried away with her staff, and the next, but the fourth punched through her defenses, leaving her robes hanging loose at one shoulder where a narrow cut marked an upwards slant of weeping red across her collarbone.
Grahst, though, had no intention of letting up.
He worked her back relentlessly, nearly running her through when she tripped and scrambled to her feet as her heels found the first step up the pass. He kept his blade moving, dealing her superficial strikes when he could, but mostly just bearing his sword down on the steel of her staff as she frantically deflected his attacks. Syrah had always considered herself a good fighter, a natural combatant. She’d shamed most of her classmates in the Citadel, and held her own out in the world without much effort more than once.
Now, though, she saw for the first time what true skill was. Rather than talent and teaching, Grahst’s bladework was the result of need and hardship, an expertise gained only from living by the sword since he was old enough to wield it. There was almost nothing she could do. Had he left her even a moment to recover she might have been able to blind him with a flash of magic, or blast the ice and snow out from under him, but Grahst was all too clearly aware of this. His attacks were preemptively relentless, a vicious series of cuts and thrusts that kept her attention completely devoted to blocking, dodging, and parrying his blade.
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